Of EFCA, ACORN and the Real America

Bama Athreya, Executive Director, International Labor Rights Forum

We are a non-partisan organization, and we don’t mean to suggest that any of our readers take our comments as an endorsement of either political party this Presidential campaign season.  We’ve spoken to audiences of all kinds in red states and blue states and been so touched by the broad sympathy for the plight of child workers and sweatshop workers among audiences of diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds, economic situations and personal experiences.  However, we were as offended as real Americans everywhere at the recent statement of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, echoed by several Republican party officials, suggesting that those of us who live and work in urban areas don’t count in our democracy.  This is consistent with the recent substantive attacks of Republican candidates on community organizers, principally our friends at ACORN, and on workplace organizers, embodied in attacks on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

Someone needs to stand up for the principles under attack here, principles which, we thought, crossed partisan political lines.  ACORN has its problems.  EFCA is not a magic bullet.  However, both seek to promote a principle that is essential to the fiber of our democracy.

What are these principles?  Let’s get that one straight, for starters.  Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Whether you are a member of the National Rifle Association or Mothers Against Drunk Driving, you are enjoying First Amendment protections of the right to assemble.  This right is only meaningful if individuals are at liberty to organize like-minded citizens.  The assault on this principle, via attacks on ACORN and EFCA, is what alarms us.

The Employee Free Choice Act seeks to protect workers’ rights to associate and form unions.  This right, we might think, is already protected under US law.  The need for EFCA emerges, to put it briefly, from the systematic failure of our National Labor Relations Board to effectively guarantee this right.  For more on that subject, excellent summaries have been produced by our allies at American Rights at Work.

Why should so many of the current crop of Republican candidates oppose a proposal to protect the right of workers to organize?  And why are they equally threatened by ACORN?

For those who never heard of ACORN before the recent Republican attacks, these are in fact your grandmother’s neighborhood organizers.  ACORN is a nonprofit grassroots organization that has been organizing low-income people throughout the United States for the past forty years.  Its stated mission is to “help neighbors together to work for stronger, safer and more just communities.”  What’s wrong with that?

John McCain commented yesterday in an interview on CNBC that he is firmly opposed to EFCA.  He has stated that ACORN is a threat to “democracy” – loosely defined, we take it.  In both stances, he comes down firmly on the side of employers, who want to limit the power of workers to associate in the workplace, and are the principal reason, over the years, for the evisceration of the NLRA.  The opposition of some Republican leaders to ACORN smacks of the same elitism, favoring the rights of those who are already influential- employers, landlords – and seeking to strictly circumscribe the ability of those who would seek to organize and demand workplace, community or property rights in the face of these elite interests.

This, we presume, is also what Governor Palin means when she addresses her audiences as constituting the “real America.”  It is a view of America that is deeply and fundamentally at odds with the basic principles of citizen involvement that sustain our democracy.  It is a view that is fundamentally elitist and moves us toward oligopoly rather than nurturing democratic process.  It curtails space for the millions of real Americans who do not control resources but seek nonetheless to enjoy a political voice.  Palin might enjoy meeting some of the folks that do the day-to-day grassroots work of sustaining and practicing our First Amendment rights.  We invite true patriots everywhere to stand up for communities and unions, and invite political candidates of all convictions on a tour sometime of the Real America in which we all work.

Comments

[Paul Garver]

Your editorial is right on the mark because it correctly identifies the essential need for union and community organizations that address the fundamental bases for power in our quasi-democracy. These principles will be even more relevant if the upcoming election opens up a bit more space for organizing. We will have to use any window of opportunity forcefully and wisely.